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This piece uses a tiny, two-table coffee bar in Paris as a lens to understand the next major shift in consumer behavior. As Paris becomes increasingly commercialized and TikTok-optimized, a countertrend is emerging: hyper-niche, craft-driven spaces are becoming the new anchors of trust and loyalty. The essay argues that the city is splitting into two futures. This pendulum shows up not just in food and retail, but in luxury advertising as well: where Bottega Veneta, Burberry, and Jacquemus are leaning into niche cultural codes, dream-state storytelling, and art-forward references rather than mass-friendly content. Key takeaway: In an era of algorithmic sameness, the brands that stand out will be the ones that go narrow, intentional, and distinct.
I am sitting in a coffee shop in Paris having a surprisingly clarifying morning.
I've been ruminating on and grieving my life in Paris. For the first time in a long time, and the first time living here entirely on my own, I’m starting to see another side of this city’s beauty. It’s painful that it took the near end of an era for me to notice it again. I fell out of love with Paris for a moment, but Paris will still be here. I actually think right now feels like a pivot.
I’m glad I forced myself outside today. Sitting in a coffee shop and working after being so out of social practice has been a breath of fresh air.
I’m learning the importance of community and of establishing authentic connections with people. It gives the soul a kind of satisfaction you can’t get elsewhere. We’re social beings, after all.
This is my favorite coffee shop in Paris. Its the state of being that once you find it, you don't need to keep searching anymore.
It genuinely shocks me how underrated it is. But I’m not mad about it. What’s lovely is that it’s just coffee. There are two tables in the whole shop. Every time I come in, it’s full. I didn’t think I’d get a seat today, but I shot my shot, and I’m happy I did.
Not only has this café been awarded the best coffee in Europe, but they communicate their savoir-faire throughout the immersive store experience. The moment you enter, an immediate sense of trust is established between you and the brand that they understand the art of good coffee.
To your left is the full coffee bar. A stunning La Marzocco machine sits at the edge of a milk-chocolate–colored marble countertop, perfectly matching the cream walls and natural chestnut wood interior. The orange glow of their branded bags brings a warm, comforting atmosphere to the space. The menu is a tightly curated selection of beans from some of the best small-batch farmers in the world.
Across from this is a wall of specialized filter and espresso equipment for purchase to elevate the integrity of your drinking experience at home.
Sitting here is a unique experience because it’s one of the very few places in Paris that serves only coffee. And that made me think about markets.
On a recent walk with a friend, I realized that I am constantly thinking about the cyclical nature of consumer markets. We were sitting by the Seine and noticed a group of Spanish speakers on a tour. She mentioned that, in parts of Latin America, it’s vacation season. I immediately went to thoughts of the global tourist cycle. But that’s for another essay.
Everything in the market functions like a pendulum. It swings to extremes at the micro level, but behaves cyclically at the macro scale.
Paris is splitting into two futures. On one side, hyper-niche spaces built on depth, craft, and trust. On the other, a rapidly inflating, sugar-high consumer bubble optimized for TikTok virality and mass appeal. This will shape the next era of brands, culture, and consumption in Paris.
In a world (and a city) inflating toward mega-commercial, content-friendly sameness, the future belongs to hyper-niche, deeply felt spaces and stories. The next wave of loyalty and culture-shaping brands will be hyper-specialized oases inside a noisy “one stop shop” culture.
Major brands today are stretched too thin, offering everything, everywhere. The broader the assortment, the weaker and less credible the point of view. And the less trust the consumer feels.
In todays culture where there is a constant surplus of stimulation at one fixed destination, it is refreshing to come to a spot that just has one stimulus. A breath of fresh air, if you will…
Coffee. That’s it. No food, no music, just the ritual of grinding, pouring, and tasting. It slows you down into presence, gives your attention somewhere very specific to land, and invites you the opportunity to train taste.
This is the shape the next wave of loyalty will take.
But for now, if the coffee bar is one end of the pendulum then the rest of Paris is swinging hard in the other direction.
Paris’ dominant consumer market is becoming a case study in what I’d call a sugar-high market: fast, hyper-photogenic, optimized for TikTok, and slightly hollow if you scratch beneath the surface.
Paris is leading the future of France’s consumer market and it’s very visible. The influencer market has only just begun to be tapped into and has been evolving into a hyper-commercialised state since COVID.
Since I first visited Paris in 2022, and having now lived here the last two years, I can see the bubble expanding in real time. I used to write about this phenomenon in the U.S. market a few years back but now I can more clearly argue that western european markets, more specifically Paris, are following suit.
You see it in the retail landscape first. Shein appears inside BHV. Reformation opened its first Paris store early November. Alo Yoga announces a flagship on the Champs-Élysées set to open for 2026. Beaugrenelle Mall fills up with Joe & the Juice, Puffy cookie counters, and global chains. American skincare brands like Glossier and Glow Recipe that at one point I paid import fees for, now sit around the corner at Sephora France. Cafés like Maurice, owned by the fast-growing Homer group, expand quickly and the quality drops just as fast. It’s the same pattern on repeat: scale first, soul later (if ever).
Then there’s the cultural layer that will continue to saturate. Search “Paris things to do” and you’ll see a copy paste format of the same handful of content: Bon Marché plastic-wrapped Bordier butter, truffle pasta from the Mama group, custom-engraved combs from Officine Universelle Buly, hot chocolate and chantilly from Cafe de Flore, the latest expo at Bourse de Commerce, Nuovo Vintage… An culturally dense city compressed into a carousel of twelve trending stops.
Native French influencer culture is only just on the rise, but the early players already have serious reach: @Sarahbabineau_,@Heloise.guillet, @Elisalevallois, and a small handful of others. Their main platforms are TikTok and Instagram, and the city is starting to draw more into that gaze.
In between the chains and the monuments, a new species appears: what I think of as bespoke-viral cafés. Places like Sevenly Heart, Recto Verso, Fauna. They’re not global franchises, but undeniably optimized for social media. These also pop up in your search, by the way.
The bubble will continue to inflate and be brought to a U.S.-like consumer market culture, but of course, within the cultural and quantitative constraints of Paris and France.
Similar places exist across all major cities. The idea about the sugar-high market is not too late and will be relevant across the market over all time. This phenomenon will trickle down into other developing, or, “lagging” economic markets over the evolution of time and the cyclical nature of the economy at mass scale. It always does.
Which brings me back to that pendulum:
On one hand, we have this tiny bar that only sells coffee. On the other, we have Paris inflating into a mega-commercial bubble that looks more American every month. Both are true at once and within that tension is exactly where the next wave of brands will be born.
Maybe that’s why Bottega Veneta’s latest ‘What Are Dreams’ campaign has been looping in my mind. It feels like the ad-world expression of this same shift.
Luxury brands are quietly moving away from glossy, universal, easily digestible content and toward niche cultural codes and building dreamstate narratives across the board. Burberry leaning into hyper-specific British subcultures, Jacquemus responding to criticism with self-aware, meme-coded ads, to a more conceptual artistic expression via bottega veneta.
When I saw the campaign, my mind went immediately to À bout de souffle by Jean-Luc Godard. Turns out they aren’t formally connected, but the conceptual DNA overlaps. And furthermore it turns out the bottega campaign is based off a previous work done by Michal in 1999 for Vogue.
My mind was not wrong to take me here. The creative directions interrogate identity, self-image, representation. However, each does so via its own medium, with its own theoretical framing and formal constraints. We can nerd out about this on a later post, though.
Nevertheless by linking these three, we see a chain of ideas: mid-20th-century cinema (Godard) plays with the face and mirror and medium; later photography (Michals) takes that further into a surreal representation on existence; then today, a luxury fashion brand commissions the same photographer to bring those ideas into the world of fashion imagery.
Even at the top of the market, the move is the same as my neighborhood coffee bar: less generic, more specific. Less ‘relatable content,’ more dream-worlds you can lean into. This is the cycle here; leaning into niche cultures, gaining capital momentum and influence,scaling into IP-level brands in order to survive at the mass market, then eventually needing to reinvent as niche again.
As Paris inflates into another commercial bubble, I find myself quietly doing the opposite: shrinking my life down to a suitcase, a notebook, a few good people, and a coffee bar that only serves coffee.
In a way, I’m just following the same market instinct I’ve been writing about: when everything is everywhere, the only sane move is to become very, very specific.
This piece uses a tiny, two-table coffee bar in Paris as a lens to understand the next major shift in consumer behavior. As Paris becomes increasingly commercialized and TikTok-optimized, a countertrend is emerging: hyper-niche, craft-driven spaces are becoming the new anchors of trust and loyalty. The essay argues that the city is splitting into two futures. This pendulum shows up not just in food and retail, but in luxury advertising as well: where Bottega Veneta, Burberry, and Jacquemus are leaning into niche cultural codes, dream-state storytelling, and art-forward references rather than mass-friendly content. Key takeaway: In an era of algorithmic sameness, the brands that stand out will be the ones that go narrow, intentional, and distinct.
I am sitting in a coffee shop in Paris having a surprisingly clarifying morning.
I've been ruminating on and grieving my life in Paris. For the first time in a long time, and the first time living here entirely on my own, I’m starting to see another side of this city’s beauty. It’s painful that it took the near end of an era for me to notice it again. I fell out of love with Paris for a moment, but Paris will still be here. I actually think right now feels like a pivot.
I’m glad I forced myself outside today. Sitting in a coffee shop and working after being so out of social practice has been a breath of fresh air.
I’m learning the importance of community and of establishing authentic connections with people. It gives the soul a kind of satisfaction you can’t get elsewhere. We’re social beings, after all.
This is my favorite coffee shop in Paris. Its the state of being that once you find it, you don't need to keep searching anymore.
It genuinely shocks me how underrated it is. But I’m not mad about it. What’s lovely is that it’s just coffee. There are two tables in the whole shop. Every time I come in, it’s full. I didn’t think I’d get a seat today, but I shot my shot, and I’m happy I did.
Not only has this café been awarded the best coffee in Europe, but they communicate their savoir-faire throughout the immersive store experience. The moment you enter, an immediate sense of trust is established between you and the brand that they understand the art of good coffee.
To your left is the full coffee bar. A stunning La Marzocco machine sits at the edge of a milk-chocolate–colored marble countertop, perfectly matching the cream walls and natural chestnut wood interior. The orange glow of their branded bags brings a warm, comforting atmosphere to the space. The menu is a tightly curated selection of beans from some of the best small-batch farmers in the world.
Across from this is a wall of specialized filter and espresso equipment for purchase to elevate the integrity of your drinking experience at home.
Sitting here is a unique experience because it’s one of the very few places in Paris that serves only coffee. And that made me think about markets.
On a recent walk with a friend, I realized that I am constantly thinking about the cyclical nature of consumer markets. We were sitting by the Seine and noticed a group of Spanish speakers on a tour. She mentioned that, in parts of Latin America, it’s vacation season. I immediately went to thoughts of the global tourist cycle. But that’s for another essay.
Everything in the market functions like a pendulum. It swings to extremes at the micro level, but behaves cyclically at the macro scale.
Paris is splitting into two futures. On one side, hyper-niche spaces built on depth, craft, and trust. On the other, a rapidly inflating, sugar-high consumer bubble optimized for TikTok virality and mass appeal. This will shape the next era of brands, culture, and consumption in Paris.
In a world (and a city) inflating toward mega-commercial, content-friendly sameness, the future belongs to hyper-niche, deeply felt spaces and stories. The next wave of loyalty and culture-shaping brands will be hyper-specialized oases inside a noisy “one stop shop” culture.
Major brands today are stretched too thin, offering everything, everywhere. The broader the assortment, the weaker and less credible the point of view. And the less trust the consumer feels.
In todays culture where there is a constant surplus of stimulation at one fixed destination, it is refreshing to come to a spot that just has one stimulus. A breath of fresh air, if you will…
Coffee. That’s it. No food, no music, just the ritual of grinding, pouring, and tasting. It slows you down into presence, gives your attention somewhere very specific to land, and invites you the opportunity to train taste.
This is the shape the next wave of loyalty will take.
But for now, if the coffee bar is one end of the pendulum then the rest of Paris is swinging hard in the other direction.
Paris’ dominant consumer market is becoming a case study in what I’d call a sugar-high market: fast, hyper-photogenic, optimized for TikTok, and slightly hollow if you scratch beneath the surface.
Paris is leading the future of France’s consumer market and it’s very visible. The influencer market has only just begun to be tapped into and has been evolving into a hyper-commercialised state since COVID.
Since I first visited Paris in 2022, and having now lived here the last two years, I can see the bubble expanding in real time. I used to write about this phenomenon in the U.S. market a few years back but now I can more clearly argue that western european markets, more specifically Paris, are following suit.
You see it in the retail landscape first. Shein appears inside BHV. Reformation opened its first Paris store early November. Alo Yoga announces a flagship on the Champs-Élysées set to open for 2026. Beaugrenelle Mall fills up with Joe & the Juice, Puffy cookie counters, and global chains. American skincare brands like Glossier and Glow Recipe that at one point I paid import fees for, now sit around the corner at Sephora France. Cafés like Maurice, owned by the fast-growing Homer group, expand quickly and the quality drops just as fast. It’s the same pattern on repeat: scale first, soul later (if ever).
Then there’s the cultural layer that will continue to saturate. Search “Paris things to do” and you’ll see a copy paste format of the same handful of content: Bon Marché plastic-wrapped Bordier butter, truffle pasta from the Mama group, custom-engraved combs from Officine Universelle Buly, hot chocolate and chantilly from Cafe de Flore, the latest expo at Bourse de Commerce, Nuovo Vintage… An culturally dense city compressed into a carousel of twelve trending stops.
Native French influencer culture is only just on the rise, but the early players already have serious reach: @Sarahbabineau_,@Heloise.guillet, @Elisalevallois, and a small handful of others. Their main platforms are TikTok and Instagram, and the city is starting to draw more into that gaze.
In between the chains and the monuments, a new species appears: what I think of as bespoke-viral cafés. Places like Sevenly Heart, Recto Verso, Fauna. They’re not global franchises, but undeniably optimized for social media. These also pop up in your search, by the way.
The bubble will continue to inflate and be brought to a U.S.-like consumer market culture, but of course, within the cultural and quantitative constraints of Paris and France.
Similar places exist across all major cities. The idea about the sugar-high market is not too late and will be relevant across the market over all time. This phenomenon will trickle down into other developing, or, “lagging” economic markets over the evolution of time and the cyclical nature of the economy at mass scale. It always does.
Which brings me back to that pendulum:
On one hand, we have this tiny bar that only sells coffee. On the other, we have Paris inflating into a mega-commercial bubble that looks more American every month. Both are true at once and within that tension is exactly where the next wave of brands will be born.
Maybe that’s why Bottega Veneta’s latest ‘What Are Dreams’ campaign has been looping in my mind. It feels like the ad-world expression of this same shift.
Luxury brands are quietly moving away from glossy, universal, easily digestible content and toward niche cultural codes and building dreamstate narratives across the board. Burberry leaning into hyper-specific British subcultures, Jacquemus responding to criticism with self-aware, meme-coded ads, to a more conceptual artistic expression via bottega veneta.
When I saw the campaign, my mind went immediately to À bout de souffle by Jean-Luc Godard. Turns out they aren’t formally connected, but the conceptual DNA overlaps. And furthermore it turns out the bottega campaign is based off a previous work done by Michal in 1999 for Vogue.
My mind was not wrong to take me here. The creative directions interrogate identity, self-image, representation. However, each does so via its own medium, with its own theoretical framing and formal constraints. We can nerd out about this on a later post, though.
Nevertheless by linking these three, we see a chain of ideas: mid-20th-century cinema (Godard) plays with the face and mirror and medium; later photography (Michals) takes that further into a surreal representation on existence; then today, a luxury fashion brand commissions the same photographer to bring those ideas into the world of fashion imagery.
Even at the top of the market, the move is the same as my neighborhood coffee bar: less generic, more specific. Less ‘relatable content,’ more dream-worlds you can lean into. This is the cycle here; leaning into niche cultures, gaining capital momentum and influence,scaling into IP-level brands in order to survive at the mass market, then eventually needing to reinvent as niche again.
As Paris inflates into another commercial bubble, I find myself quietly doing the opposite: shrinking my life down to a suitcase, a notebook, a few good people, and a coffee bar that only serves coffee.
In a way, I’m just following the same market instinct I’ve been writing about: when everything is everywhere, the only sane move is to become very, very specific.
